


One-Hundred-Thousand Heartbeats (Give Me One Last Smile)

by nic_takes_Ls (nic_L)



Series: 100,000 Heartbeats [1]
Category: DreamSMP (Video Blogging RPF), DreamSMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Of Course - Freeform, Angst, But oops, Character Death, Fox Hybrid Wilbur, Fundy POV, Fundy-centric, Gen, Heartbeats, Heavy Angst, Implied Character Death, Just three generations being fucking sad, Mmmm, Not Traitor Wilbur Soot, Secret Fox Hybrid Wilbur, The only flowers in winter, Wilbur Soot-centric, a clock face - Freeform, a fireplace, and then it's implied that Fundy and Phil get to go feral, featuring:, lmaoo i forgot to add those woops, that damned smile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28554264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nic_L/pseuds/nic_takes_Ls
Summary: On November 16th, Wilbur had not, in fact, gotten to press the button. Phil got to him first.(L’Manberg still went off with a bang, of course. Dream just had to go in and tap the thing himself a bit later.)He will, in fact, be executed in 24 hours.There's 100,000 heartbeats in 24 hours.Fundy is going to be with Wilbur for each one.
Relationships: Fundy & Philza, Fundy & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & Philza
Series: 100,000 Heartbeats [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092104
Comments: 78
Kudos: 278





	One-Hundred-Thousand Heartbeats (Give Me One Last Smile)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Next Twenty-Four Hours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/879818) by [Saras_Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saras_Girl/pseuds/Saras_Girl). 



> Basic premise inspired by The Next Twenty-Four Hours by Saras_Girl 
> 
> Uh. I just like angst, whoops.

It is 8:30 in the morning. Cool sunlight tries to warm up the window panes, and paints Wilbur’s face pale as Fundy watches him stare blankly at the clock.   
  
  
It’s so quiet Fundy can hear his own breath rattle in his chest, his heartbeat thumping between his ears. He lifts his hand and presses against his chest until he can feel it thrum under his palm.   
  
  
It’s rhythmic and lulling and normally a soothing drum, but all he can remember is a line he’d read as a child, scouring through his father’s library and flipping at random, sounding out letters until they made words and sentences and stories.   
  
  
‘The heart beats around 100,000 times every day,’ One book had read, and Fundy had tugged on Wilbur’s sleeve after, book in hand, his high-pitched voice shrill as he asked; “Are you sure this book is right? Because that seems like a lot.”  
  
  
Wilbur had laughed and grinned, pulled Fundy close to his chest to hear his heartbeat, heavy and thrumming and safe and steady. His black-furred tail intertwining with Fundy’s amber one.   
  
  
“Of course it is. Your heart and mine beat over 100,000 times every single day.” Then Wilbur had picked him up and spun him ‘round before they both left the office, hand clutched in hand.  
  
  
Fundy also remembers that the heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood in twenty-four hours.   
  
  
In the next twenty-four hours Wilbur’s own will no longer flow. His heart will still, eyes close, and he will be gone.  
  
  
The clock ticks.  
  
  
 _8:31._ _  
  
__  
_Twenty-three hours and 59 minutes, Fundy corrects himself.  
  
  
Fundy moves his hand from over his heart and turns his gaze to Wilbur, sitting at the kitchen table and still gazing at the slowly ticking clock, eyes dull and dark ringed.   
  
  
It’s been a few hours since Wilbur came here to Phil’s house, a few hours since the final jurisdiction had been called, a few hours since Tubbo, wet-eyed and remorseful, tie tight around around his neck, had announced the upcoming execution of one Wilbur Soot, for his crimes of terrorism against L’Manberg.

Fundy doesn't think this is what Phil expected to happen after he'd pulled Wilbur sobbing and thrashing from his damned button room.

Once everyone had seen Phil streak across the sky with Wilbur in his arms, they'd thought that at least the threat of detonation was gone, already dealing with Technoblade's impromptu fireworks show.

But Dream had disappeared from the scene and as Technoblade summoned his Withers, the land ripped itself to shreds where they all walked.

And Wilbur's fate was sealed, it seems.  
  
There's a quiet, breathy noise and Fundy snaps his head around, but Wilbur is ever unmoving.

The silence isn't uncomfortable (Fundy won't let anything be uncomfortable, for these 100,000 heartbeats, he's promised) but he's close to shaking Wilbur out of his solemn reverie.

But just as Fundy plants his hand on the table to stand, Wilbur rises smoothly to his feet, even after all this time, and turns to Fundy.

Fundy's stomach drops.

Wilbur smiles. It's so gentle and so broken and so fragile and Fundy wants to go back to before he'd burned his father's flag sewn with the same thread that stitched the patch on his hat, go back to before he'd made Wilbur cry and fall to his knees from a distant hill away with crumbled walls, before wars made Wilbur distant and Fundy rebellious.

His hands tremble and his breath stutters. Fundy curls his fingers, lets his claws dig into his palm.

He wants to go Tubbo and shove him into a wall and make him stop this.

But Tubbo can't, and Wilbur knows that Fundy didn't want to betray him, and Wilbur is still smiling.

Fundy can't save Wilbur, and nobody else could. Wilbur wouldn't let them anyways, he thinks.   
  
  
Wilbur smiles, and he says;

"Fundy, for breeze's sake, you look like you're heading to your execution."

The warm tone in his voice makes Fundy choke, and Wilbur's smile drops a bit, before he blinks and sighs.

He spreads his arms wide and Fundy crashes into him.

"Don't." He feels his voice creak in his throat and pulls Wilbur close, hands locked together behind Wilbur's back, the sweater he wears soft in his grip.   
  
  
“Okay.” Wilbur whispers and buries his face into Fundy’s hair. Fundy can feel Wilbur’s heartbeats soft and steady and ever so numbered-   
  
  
Every hour is 416 of those 100,000 heartbeats, he’s calculated. Every minute is nearly 70.    
  
  
They stay locked until a quiet thud comes from the just-open window, and Fundy reluctantly slips from Wilbur’s grip to open the door. The ankle monitor Wilbur wears won’t let him within a foot of the door and Phil was careful to make Fundy lock them, paranoid of still-revenge-hungry citizens.

Fundy fumbles with the lock, the knob ice-cold in his paws, and then Phil is standing there, snow dusting his hair and with a bouquet of pristine flowers in his arms. They're too lush and vibrant to not come from Niki; Flowers won't grow in the winter for anybody but her. Their petals have her careful, conscious touches painted in them.

Phil has purple rings under his eyes, vibrant as stained glass. But his eyes glitter, however weakly, at the sight of Wilbur, who flicks his gaze from Phil to the flowers and then turns on his feet.

"Come in, Phil, we should get those in a vase." He says, like things are going to be okay and as if flowers will die faster than he.   
  
  
Phil takes off his coat and shakes it and his wings out before folding it and leaving it on the table, bouquet still balanced in his hands. Wilbur walks into the kitchen and Fundy follows, desperate to not let him out of his sight.

“Hey, Wilbur.” Phil’s voice is tinged with a slight rasp; weary. Fundy recognizes it from when Wilbur would spend nights working in his office, waking earlier than them all and yet the last to fall asleep. When war was only first looming on the horizon and after, when Fundy was too afraid to speak up about how the rest of the nation seemed to ignore Wilbur and led him to call for an election. Before Fundy had run against his father.

But Phil’s ragged voice is from preemptive grief, and Fundy doesn’t know if that’s any better.

Strapped across Phil's back, between his wings, is Wilbur's old guitar, but Phil's back is turned away from Wilbur and hidden, so Fundy keeps quiet.

He watches as Wilbur grabs a sea-foam green tinted vase from the highest of Phil’s shelves with ease and fills it with water before Phil arranges the flowers carefully in it.

  
It’s so domestic it hurts Fundy, to see how Wilbur’s given up.    
  
  
How he won’t fight, how he accepts this ticking-time-bomb of a ‘fate.’   
  


The vase is set on a windowsill and Wilbur is silent, standing still and looking awfully young in his sweater and jeans, narrow ears poking out of his hair loose and curling and the only feature that belays his exhaustion is the sharp-starved lines to his face.

It's been a while since Wilbur was seen out of his coat or uniform, before this, Fundy muses. Since he hadn't tried to hide his vulpine ears or tail.   
  
  
Fundy and Phil stand at Wilbur’s back, all silent in the face of a bouquet of flowers.    
  
  
Fundy gestures to the guitar behind Phil’s wings, and Phil takes it off by the strap and hands it to him. It’s the same worn one that was used to sing Fundy to sleep, all those years ago, notches in the neck and a single mismatched gold string. He wrings his hands around the strap and with an empty hand, taps Wilbur on the shoulder.   
  
  
Wilbur turns, eyes snapping out of their glazed stare, and then has a visible double-take at the guitar. Fundy doesn’t change his expression, exactly, but the pure surprise in Wilbur’s eyes shifts something in his dread-heavy heart, not away but to the side, and he passes the instrument to Wilbur, who instinctively pulls the strap over his neck and holds it ready to play.    
  
  
Wilbur keeps his eyes flitting over Fundy’s frame ~~(~~ ~~ Fundy doesn’t want to think about Wilbur must be committing to memory like wants to imprint Wilbur’s face on the inside of his eyelids ~~ ~~)~~ and then he gives a smile, before he sits on the edge of the table. That’s always been a habit of his, sitting where he’s not supposed to be.   
  
  
Fundy sits in the chair in front of him and looks up as Wilbur begins to play, a melancholy melody that has him running his fingers all over the fretboard, no words but a harmonic hum.    
  
  
Phil soon pulls out a chair beside Fundy, and they both sit back and listen to Wilbur’s final show, a wing brushing Fundy’s shoulder and cool light streaming through the window across Wilbur’s face.    
  
  
Eventually, Wilbur turns his head from his hands to Fundy, their shared hickory-brown eyes meeting and Wilbur reaches from his perch and pulls Fundy to his feet, then places the guitar into his paws.    
  
  
“Do you know how to play  _ My L’Manberg _ ?” Wilbur asks, the question breaking the strangely agreed-upon vocal silence.    
  
  
“I- Uh, no.” Fundy finds himself stuttering. He grips one hand around the neck, feeling the strings bite into his fingers.    
  
  
“I’ll teach you.”   
  
  
Fundy gives Phil a blank glance before joining his father on the tabletop, shoulders raised like hackles before Wilbur places his hands on them.    
  
  
“Relax.”    
  
  
Fundy lowers his shoulders, lets Wilbur arrange his position and hands around the worn but gorgeous instrument. He hasn’t played in almost a year now, but the stance settles into his limbs like it were yesterday.

  
His heart provides a metronome, a beat.  (He ignores the void in his chest telling him to count each one.)   
  


Eventually, after a few stuttering starts, Fundy remembers the shape of the chords on his fingers, instinctively gets the picking of the song, and his more raspy voice joins Wilbur’s hushed lilt, and they move from one song to another, some old folk songs, a few of Wilbur’s own; Wilbur careful to make Fundy play each one perfect. He manages to prod Phil into singing more than once.    
  
  
Fundy begins to play a song he recalls from hundreds of nights near the ocean, a lonely tune, and Wilbur stares at Niki’s gifted flower vase unblinking for the duration of it. His fingers tremble as he wishes he could take Wilbur outside, wishes it was warm and the snow stopped falling grey upon the earth, wishes they’d at least be able to see a final sunset, and wishes Wilbur wouldn’t die at all. He plays the song twice over until he can’t, fingers too raw from the thin strings, and takes the guitar off ever so quietly, as to not break the frozen reverie his father is in.    
  
  
Fundy stands and sets the instrument on the table before stepping back beside Phil’s chair, and Phil turns to look at him, hat in his lap and eyes knowing and too-kind.    
  
  
Wilbur startles out of his trance by the shadow of a bird flying past the window, and then slides off the table himself.    
  
  
“Come here, please.”    
  
  
And Fundy follows. Phil is seconds behind.   
  
  
Wilbur’s stopped in front of the unused fireplace in Phil’s foyer, already crouching and poking at the logs there when Fundy rounds the corner. Fundy bites his lip and lights the wood for him, and Wilbur sits cross-legged on the rug before it, steadily growing fire starting to cast amber across his frame.    
  
  
Wilbur pats the rug on either side of him and Fundy and Phil both sit. There are goosebumps across Fundy’s skin at the rush of heat, and Wilbur rests his head on Fundy’s shoulder, curls flopping into Fundy’s view but he doesn’t push them away.    
  
  
The fire crackles and Wilbur’s head grows heavier, and Fundy watches in slow, rending horror as Wilbur goes to sleep, time and blood and heartbeats slipping past, there’s a deadline and  _ Wilbur is using his hours this way. _   
  
  
Fundy will not wake him.   
  
  
After a while and Wilbur makes a gentle huff in his sleep, Philza shifts so that his wings drape over Fundy’s side and Wilbur’s legs, the downy blanket of feathers plush to the touch. Fundy intertwines his tail with Wilbur’s as if he’s a child yet again. He never really stopped being one, he supposes, to Wilbur.    
  
  
He had wanted to not be, once.    
  
  
But the past week of trials and cells and waiting has somehow resolved all their conflicts without any words at all, conversations already spoken in actions, nothing to say, and even if there were there’s no time for any now.    
  
  
Fundy looks up at Phil, and the way his hand rests on Wilbur’s ankle reminds him that Wilbur is a child too, to Philza.    
  
  
“It hurts so much, and he’s not even gone,” The words slip their way out of Fundy’s mouth like it’s something new.    
  
  
“Yeah.” That’s all Phil says to the matter. A hand makes its way to Fundy’s and they clasp tight.    
  
  
Minutes  ~~ (70 beats) ~~ and hours  ~~ (416 beats) ~~ and the evening passes by, and the moon is slipping the sky and the snow has stopped and Fundy repeatedly goes back to his recent pastime of wondering what would’ve happened if things were different, that November 16th, and repeatedly tells himself to stop.    
  
  
He wonders at one point whether things really are better with L’Manberg rebuilding, anymore.   
  
  
He wonders what it means that Philza and he are the only ones here with Wilbur.   
  
  
He wonders how it happens that Dream sets off the bombs and if the masked man thinks he’s that immortal.   
  
  
He wonders why taking L’s in L’Manberg means taking  _ lives _ now.    
  
  
He wonders if Wilbur was right, when he said that this special place is gone.    
  
  
He wonders if Technoblade wouldn’t mind him and Philza tagging along in the wilderness, after tomorrow.    
  
  
His eyes flutter. He falls asleep to Phil’s heartbeat as he slumps against him in turn, Wilbur now resting on his chest.   
  


* * *

  
  
A hand on his shoulder startles Fundy awake, and he flinches and sits up, a heavy weight on his chest shifting-   
  
  
He opens his eyes, blurry with sleep.    
  
  
His gaze meets the fresh embers of a fire, with Wilbur asleep in his lap, ears half splayed in sleep, though twitching from being moved.    
  
  
Fundy’s breath hitches as he realizes that he’s been asleep. Phil is crouched behind him and his face solemn.    
  
  
Fundy looks to the clock on the walls, ears flat against his head and tail tight around Wilbur’s leg.    
  
  
It is 6:28.  _ Two hours.  _   
  
  
He runs a quick calculation through his head, taps his fingers to his thumb in a 1-3-2-4 order.    
  
  
There’s around 8,400 heartbeats until Wilbur’s dead. They’ve got to be ready to leave in 4,200.    
  
  
Fundy turns back to Phil and the man gestures to Wilbur, still in the throes of sleep, curls splayed across his neck and into his closed eyes. His dry lips are nearly a smile.    
  
  
Fundy doesn’t know whether he wants to bury himself into Wilbur’s bones or keep Wilbur safe inside his, so after Phil shakes Wilbur awake ever so gently, he wraps his arms around his shoulders and Wilbur does the same, and there’s heartbeats and then there’s a voice in Fundy’s head whispering ‘Is this the last-” to every one of Wilbur’s actions as the three of them move around the house.    
  
  
Wilbur’s changed from the yellow sweater he’d slept in to a checkered grey shirt, a blazer thrown over it; an outfit Fundy’s seen in pictures, in photos with frayed edges and a Wilbur younger than him, now. Wilbur presses a worn but soft leather trenchcoat into his hands.   
  
  
Phil brushes Wilbur’s hair out, arranging it to nearly cover his ears once more, as per Wilbur’s request, and the entire time Fundy wants to scream and cry and claws the walls, but Wilbur is sitting there, eyes closed and shoulders lax and he’s  _ smiling _ , so Fundy does not.    
  
  
With 20 minutes  ( ~~1400 heartbeats~~ )  left until Wilbur’s set to leave,  (forever) Fundy glances at the table and suddenly realizes he hasn’t seen Wilbur eat at all, but Wilbur blinks at him with knowing eyes and- It’s not like it matters, does it?   
  
  
The three of them wait, standing shoulder to shoulder before the front door, and Fundy has his hand wrapped around Wilbur’s wrist, perhaps holding too-tight but it’s not like Wilbur says anything.   
  
  
“It won’t hurt, you know.” Phil says in a low rumble.   
  
  
He’s talking about the method of execution. Not another fireworks show, of course. It’ll be a concentrated potion of weakness- so strong Wilbur will fall unconscious within seconds- and then a potion of harming.    
  
  
There shouldn’t have ever been another execution.   
  
  
“I wish it would,” Wilbur answers.    
  
  
Nobody has anything they want to say to that, so they don’t.    
  
  
Minutes ~~(70 heartbeats in each one, Fundy reminds himself pointlessly)~~ until the men who will walk Wilbur to the execution site remain, and Wilbur asks Fundy and Phil to  _ promise me you won’t stay _ . Fundy and Phil promise. Wilbur smiles.    
  
  
There’s a knock at the door and then three of them are flanked by two men with swords at their hips, escorted through a grey-skied city to a podium with no audience.    
  
  
Tubbo and Quackity are nowhere to be seen, and nobody knows if it’s better that way or not.    
  
  
Ranboo stands from a wooden platform, watching in horror, and Fundy meets his mismatched eyes and makes a mental note to approach him and let him know he’s welcome to join him and Phil as they leave tomorrow. He’s pretty sure Ranboo will take up on that offer.   
  
  
Fundy can already feel the fire building in his chest, the anger and grief ready to kindle it, his claws biting into his hands and a faint stickiness of blood until Wilbur takes his hand and runs his thumb over the freshly made scars, as if trying to comfort him.   
  
  
“Shh,” Wilbur reaches up and cups Fundy’s face, eyes flitting over his face before he moves one of his hands to Fundy’s chest and the other presses Fundy’s hand to his.    
  
  
Their heartbeats thrum in unison, and Fundy nearly lets a sob make its way past his throat.    
  
  
Wilbur pulls away all too soon and then does the same with Phil, who catches his son’s face with both hands and presses a kiss to each of his eyelids before Wilbur steps back.    
  
  
“Soot.” One of the men in suits with the cold faces calls.    
  
  
Wilbur’s eyes are shiny with tears and there’s already some running down his cheeks, and he makes a choked laugh.    
  
  
“Give me one last smile, please.” His voice cracks on the last word of his plea.   
  
  
Fundy tries but knows it’s more of a grimace, but Wilbur makes a sob and brings his hands to his mouth before men place their hands on his shoulders, prepare to drag him away. Phil gives a wet gasp.   
  
  
Tomorrow, this time, Fundy and Phil, likely Ranboo, won’t be in this nation anymore, not L’Manberg or Greater Dream SMP, tomorrow Fundy will wake up fatherless and empty and with the burnt tatters of another flag on his floorboards, and then he’ll wait and build a fire and march in time with every heartbeat of his own, let it be his drum and metronome and countdown to a fire he won’t let get put out.    
  
He’ll burn this pretender of a special place to ashes, the domain of the masked man who let it pretend to rubble.    
  
  
He will.    
  
  
But right now, Wilbur is being pulled away, around a corner, still staring back at him with a desperately loving look in his eyes.    
  
  
The last glimpse Fundy gets of Wilbur makes him fall to the floor sobbing.   
  
  
Wilbur smiles. And then he’s gone. And then there are no more heartbeats.   
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I have a really fuckin fun sequel plot for this that I will likely work on eventually (FUNDY GHOSTBUR PHILZA AND RANBOO GO FERAL) 
> 
> But until then, feel free to attack me in the comments or if you join Writer's Block Discord, there too? (Plus i love yelling about my fic ideas/give quite a few snippets on there too owo)
> 
> https://discord.gg/w9CwSK26mm


End file.
